John Otway is an English singer-songwriter who has built a cult audience through extensive touring.
James Fagan is an Australian-born folk musician. He is a singer and multi-instrumentalist specialising in the Irish bouzouki. From the early 1980s he toured in a family band, the Fagans. He began travelling to England in 1995, where he met and began working with English folk musician, Nancy Kerr. The couple married in 2007 in Bath.
Kevin Ayers was an English singer-songwriter who was active in the English psychedelic music movement. Ayers was a founding member of the psychedelic band Soft Machine in the mid-1960s, and was closely associated with the Canterbury scene. He recorded a series of albums as a solo artist and over the years worked with Brian Eno, Syd Barrett, Bridget St John, John Cale, Elton John, Robert Wyatt, Andy Summers, Mike Oldfield, Nico and Ollie Halsall, among others. After living for many years in Deià, Mallorca, he returned to the United Kingdom in the mid-1990s before moving to the south of France. His last album, The Unfairground, was released in 2007. The British rock journalist Nick Kent wrote: "Kevin Ayers and Syd Barrett were the two most important people in British pop music. Everything that came after came from them."
Battlefield Band were a Scottish traditional music group. Founded in Glasgow in 1969, they have released over 30 albums and undergone many changes of lineup. As of 2010, none of the original founders remain in the band.
Andrew Kennedy Irvine is an Irish folk musician, singer-songwriter, and a founding member of Sweeney's Men, Planxty, Patrick Street, Mozaik, LAPD and Usher's Island. He also featured in duos, with Dónal Lunny, Paul Brady, Mick Hanly, Dick Gaughan, Rens van der Zalm, and Luke Plumb. Irvine plays the mandolin, mandola, bouzouki, harmonica, and hurdy-gurdy.
Norman L. Blake is a traditional American stringed instrument artist and songwriter. He is half of the eponymous Norman & Nancy Blake band with his wife, Nancy Blake.
Dónal Lunny is an Irish folk musician and producer. He plays left-handed guitar and bouzouki, as well as keyboards and bodhrán. As a founding member of popular bands Planxty, The Bothy Band, Moving Hearts, Coolfin, Mozaik, LAPD, and Usher's Island, he has been at the forefront of the renaissance of Irish traditional music for over five decades.
Nic Jones is an English singer, songwriter and musician. Regarded as a prominent figure of the British folk revival, he has recorded five solo albums and collaborated with various musicians.
David Perry Lindley was an American musician who founded the rock band El Rayo-X and worked with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, Curtis Mayfield and Dolly Parton. He mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to him not as a multi-instrumentalist but instead as a "maxi-instrumentalist." On stage, Lindley was known for wearing garishly colored polyester shirts with clashing pants, gaining the nickname the Prince of Polyester.
Almost Acoustic is a live album by the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. Held in high esteem by fans for superb sound quality and fine musical selection, it contains songs that were recorded from late November to early December 1987 at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles. It was released on December 6, 1988.
John James is known, primarily, as a solo acoustic fingerstyle guitarist, composer and entertainer. His popular appeal is attributed to his ability to entertain with musicianship and humour, a blend of presentation and performance that has brought the art of the fingerstyle guitar, from the dedicated guitar fans to the appeal of a wider audience.
The Kentucky Colonels were a bluegrass band that was popular during the American folk music revival of the early 1960s. Formed in Burbank, California in 1954, the group released two albums, The New Sound of Bluegrass America (1963) and Appalachian Swing! (1964). The band featured the influential bluegrass guitarist Clarence White, who was largely responsible for making the acoustic guitar a lead instrument within bluegrass, and who later went on to join the Los Angeles rock band the Byrds. The Kentucky Colonels disbanded in late 1965, with two short-lived reunions taking place in 1966 and 1973.
John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett is the 1976 debut album by English folk singer-songwriter duo John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett. Released first on their own Extracked Records, the album is a collection of recordings made between 1971 and 1976.
Richard Holgarth is a British guitar player with Eddie and the Hot Rods and John Otway, as well as being the former co-owner of The Square; a music venue in Harlow, Essex.
The Krazy Kong Album is a 1980 album by Wild Willy Barrett and released on his own Red Eye Records. The songs are a collection of recordings made over a decade and are available here for the first time. The album is notable for being the first white reggae album recorded, years before Regatta de Blanc, with the title track as a prime example. 'Kong and the Soup Dragon' is a nod to the Clangers with whistles featured throughout.
Way & Bar is the 1980 album by John Otway & Wild Willy Barrett. Their last on Polydor, it also proved to be the 2nd split of the duo lasting until The Wimp and The Wild. The name Way & Bar is derived from the billboard on the back of the DK 50/80 single being cropped for the front cover. In this case, the words 'Otway & Barrett' wrap around the sleeve and the rest of the text appears on the back cover.
Organic Bondage is the third album by Wild Willy Barrett and only one with Stephen Two-Names released in 1986.
Wild Willy Barrett's Mound of Sound is the fifth solo album by Wild Willy Barrett; released in 1997, it is a collection of newly-written folk songs. The album features contributions from fellow Buckinghamshire guitarist "John Cadman" and "Bad Attitude" a collective made up of Carl Taylor and Stephen Two-Names; Mickey Mouse guy, on his third solo album, Organic Bondage.
Please Don't Throw Me to the Christians is an unfinished and unreleased album by English singer-songwriter Eddie Stanton. It was to be released on Wild Willy Barrett's record label "Black Eye" which had, by the time the album had been fully recorded, folded. The fate of five of these songs rested in Barrett's album Organic Bondage, which he arranged to fit his style. Other tracks have been since recorded by Barrett later on in his career.
Where Did I Go Right? is English singer-songwriter John Otway's first solo album. Released in 1979 it was Otway's first departure from working with Wild Willy Barrett, and his first working with a different backing band. Most of the tracks were salvaged from an aborted attempt to record an album during August and September 1978 at Mountain Studios.
